Magazine Reflection Part 2

I can spread all eight drafts of “My Contribution to an Anniversary Retrospective Concert” and see the transformations it went trough to get to its final stage. My biggest improvement was my use of clarity when trying to explain what I saw and felt like when I went through the archives. Clarity is sometimes my biggest problem because I can have this great idea in my mind and it makes complete sense to me, but as soon as I try to put it down on paper it becomes a jumbled mess. Writing eight drafts helped me experiment with techniques to clarify and bring my work to its fullest potential.

Overall, what I feel like I could have improved would have been to include more descriptions and examples of the points I was trying to make. When I was describing what I saw in the archives I included some of the pictures I saw, but I feel like I could have gotten a lot more creative with the way I wrote it.

Looking back to my very first draft, I realize how rushed, unimportant and redundant my article was. You can even tell by one of my paragraphs all the changes it had to get better.

“Digging through the archives was a whole new experience because it was like looking through someone’s greatest moments. I saw the first photographs of Jean Isaacs dancing, and watched time rush before my eyes are articles grew older and older. The newspapers told me stories of her successes and falls, of her goals and futuristic plans, and by being able to see this as an outsider was intriguing because I knew all the final outcomes.”

In that paragraph, I have no idea where it was going. The point I was trying to make was how I felt like I was time traveling, and how interesting everything was because the news occurred when I was growing up or before I was born. Here is my latest version.

“…In the process of doing so, I uncovered a window that showed me life before my time, the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s. I saw what was the latest news-I saw their latest fashions, their newest moves including “E.T.”, their advertisements for the “latest” inventions and their entertainment. It was all different from what I see now with my surroundings. It took me longer to find Isaacs’ dances because everything I saw intrigued me to read more and learn about growing up in the past.”

I feel like my idea is clearly written in a relatable way that the reader can connect with.

I learned lots of new techniques to keep in mind when writing. I feel like the one I used the most was putting meaning in the start of my sentences instead of later. So by putting the noun and verbs in the beginning, I made my paragraphs more interesting. I also tried to remove my excessive “ings” because I had a lot of those.